Page 28 - Seniorstoday February 2023 Issue

Essay
Dirty Harry
Every fairy tale ends with a prince rescuing his princess, the question is – now who
will come to rescue the prince, asks Vickram Sethi
“Happy families are all alike; every
unhappy family is unhappy in its own
way.” So said Leo Tolstoy in the opening
sentence of Anna Karenina, that Russian
tragedy and tale of woe.
As one of the world’s most famous
brands, the British royal family has a
strong, tailored narrative of patronages,
pageantry and people. The monarchy
has long demonstrated its value in
contemporary consumer culture, and
kept its buyers engaged. The pomp, the
fanfare and the pageantry nobody could
do it better than the British. Even the
change of guards at Buckingham palace
is a well-coordinated media event, which
the tourists love to lap up. Without doubt,
the British monarchy would be amongst
the top ten leading brands of the world.
Every opportunity Birthdays, Births,
Marriages, Anniversaries and Deaths are
exploited to the hilt. The death of Queen
Elizabeth was probably the most watched
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event on World Television. The palace
also licenses a large range of merchandise.
Every usable product is sold through
souvenir shops around England.
Crockery, artifacts, Caps, T Shirts, Sports
goods, Jewelry, Clocks, furnishings like
Cushion covers, Kitchen napkins, every
possible product that their dignity allows
them to do, they would create a product
and sell it. The British are truly a nation of
shopkeepers.
As kids, we all grow up on fairy tales
of RAJA RANI RAJKUMAR and
RAJKUMARI stories that are told to
us again and again. And in India we
have loads of royalty and all the other
paraphernalia of ‘hangers on’. However,
when I grew older and realised the
absurdity of so-called blue blood and
genuflecting towards someone because
of an accident of their birth, my view of
royalty changed, not to hostility, mind
you, just indifference.